1804: (The Administrative Apparatus and Dessalines’s Demographic Ambitions): The imperial cabinet consisted of just two Ministers: Vernet, who could neither …

1804: (The Administrative Apparatus and Dessalines’s Demographic Ambitions): The imperial cabinet consisted of just two Ministers: Vernet, who could neither read nor write, for Finance; and Balthasar Inginac, described as a natural-born administrator of honesty and indefatigable energy, for the Public Domains. To repopulate the war-ravaged country and, as Dessalines phrased it, to “bronze” the population, the Emperor authorized further imports of cultivateurs from Africa and attempted to induce free American Blacks to emigrate to Haiti. His ultimate goal, never realized, was to bring over 500,000 noirs from the African continent to rebuild the devastated labor force and strengthen the demographic foundation of the republic. At Marchand, later renamed “Dessalines,” the governor-general ruled in despotic state, touring the countryside and flinging handfuls of silver to scrambling peasants who hailed him as “Papa Jacques.” Of Dessalines, few contemporary descriptions and no authentic likenesses survive; a visiting British naval officer in 1804 recorded him simply as “a short stout Black.”